I just looked at my Borders Holiday Rewards total—wow, I have nearly enough money to buy another Taaschen "All-American Ads" book! Mike and Rodney on chat talked about these books so much I had to take a look and I decided I wanted the early ones. With a judicious combination of Preferred Reader Coupons and percentage off coupons from the store itself, I got these two for very little money:

All-American Ads 1900-1919

All-American Ads 1920s

And still want these two:

All-American Ads 1930s

All-American Ads 1940s

The first two are fascinating; you really need to sit down and read the ads because many of them were very text-heavy back then. It gives you a real look at what things advertisers thought people 100 years ago would desire in a product—luxury cars with velvet upholstery, for example, and of course enclosed motorcars so you did not get cold in the winter—and the artwork is sometimes stunning: elegant turn of the century lettering, scalloping, curtained frames, aristocratic people in the dress clothing of the time. These little snapshots of the time are so compelling that you can almost hear the cough of the new "horseless carriages" overtaking the elegant broughams and victorias of the time, smell the hair cream of the bright young men with their slicked down and center-parted hair, and see the glow of those revolutionary Edison "Mazda" lamps (in those days a "Mazda" was a light bulb, not a car) and the curled hair and the bright clothing of the flappers.

Labels: books, nostalgia

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:36:00 AM

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